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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Patients who travel to another country to get an organ transplant may be putting themselves at a greater risk than those who stay closer to home. A new study on kidney transplants finds patients who travel abroad have more severe complications, including higher incident of rejection and severe infection.
As the demand for kidney transplantation increases, some patients are going abroad for the surgery. There has been little research on the safety of this practice. Investigators from UCLA conducted a study looking at outcomes of kidney transplant recipients who received their surgery abroad. They compared these patients results to similar patients who underwent transplantation and care at UCLA.
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The study included 33 transplant tourists and 66 UCLA transplanted patients. The patients were followed for 16 months. Researchers say most patients traveled to their region of ethnicity with most going to China, Iran and the Philippines. Study authors say kidney rejection occurred in 12 percent of the UCLA transplanted patients compared to 30 percent of the tourist-transplanted patients. While both groups of patients suffered from infections, researchers say those who traveled abroad for treatment had much more severe infections with 27 percent of them ending up being hospitalized.
Researchers conclude that this study shows that transplant tourism is a risky option for patients awaiting kidney transplantation.
SOURCE: Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology, 2008
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